


Was He My Friend?

by Madstuart



Series: Wolf 359 Post-canon [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (for lovelace about hilbert), F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I think that's the label that belongs on this, Post-Canon, i guess?, reflections on past relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 01:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madstuart/pseuds/Madstuart
Summary: Brief little post-canon thing with Lovelace trying to figure out how she feels about Hilbert and some Minlace cuddling.





	Was He My Friend?

Isabel Lovelace had hacked her way through the first layer of security that protected the files on the Urania by the end of the first few days of their trip back to Earth. She’d spent the days since then poring over the documents contained within and trying to find ways to bypass the deeper layers of security. Jacobi had been unexpectedly helpful there; despite the air of casual idiocy he liked to project where computer programming was involved, he’d picked up more than he liked to admit from the time he’d spent working with Alana Maxwell.

She told herself she was trying to find information that would help them when they got back home, information that would help her bring Goddard down from the inside.

Instead, she found herself lingering on certain files. Found herself scouring Kepler’s database for any mention of Alexander Hilbert, of Elias Selberg, of whoever he’d been before that name.

There was surprisingly little. They’d joked about coming across Hilbert’s tax records, what felt like a lifetime ago, when the connection between the Urania and the Hephaestus had fritzed, pouring personal information about everyone on the crew into the Hephaestus’s database, but Kepler didn’t even have that much.

That wasn’t to say there wasn’t _any_ information about Hilbert in the database; the first thing Isabel found was a list of names, and subject numbers next to them. A little more digging, and Jacobi’s suggestion that Isabel try some kind of recursive algorithm—a suggestion that Hera managed to turn into a program that Isabel could run on the database of personal information that the Urania's computer system contained—unearthed research logs next, both written and audio, of the history of the Decima virus, of the history of human research that had been done with it.

She hadn’t touched any of the recent logs yet. She couldn’t bear the thought of reading about the experiments Hilbert had run on Mace and Sam and Kuan and Doug, couldn’t bear to hear him talking about them if they were no more than lab rats. But she’d dipped in to some of the older materials, listening for as long as she could bear to audio logs, reading halfway through some of his research reports and shying away when it got to be too much.

Isabel didn’t want to admit it, but it had become an obsession.

Renée found Isabel staring at a computer screen, headphones on, tears clinging to her face, one evening when they were both off the duty rotation they’d set up aboard the Urania to keep them busy during the month-long trip back to Earth. Isabel hadn’t even realized Renée was in the room until the other woman’s arms closed around her waist from behind, pulling Isabel into a close, tight hug. Isabel hastily paused the recording she’d been listening too, wiped away the tears, pulled the headphones off her ears.

“Hey,” Renée said, resting her chin on Isabel’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Isabel said back, relaxing into Renée’s arms.

“You still stuck on this?”

“I’m not…” Isabel sighed. “Yeah. I am.”

Renée leaned the side of her face against Isabel’s neck, pulling her closer and Isabel relaxed further, resting her cheek against the top of Renée’s head. “Why?”

“I…” Isabel sighed again. “I need to understand him.” She went silent, and Renée didn’t offer up any further prompts, waiting for Isabel to sort her thoughts out. After a few long, quiet minutes, Isabel started talking again, almost babbling, trying to put the entire thing in a way that Renée would understand, when Isabel didn’t understand it fully herself. “I wouldn’t have made it through my first rotation on the Hephaestus without him. He just… he was always there, you know? Mace died, and he was there. And it’s not like he coddled me, it’s not like he was ever _kind_ , but…” Isabel trailed off, plucked at the air with one hand, trying to find her train of thought. “He always said that he was happy to be of service. Always put it in terms of, I don’t know, him supporting me as the person above him in the chain of command, but…”

“But you thought he was your friend, too,” Renée said. “Because he told you what you needed to hear, when you needed to hear it.”

“Yeah.”

Another long silence, and then Isabel felt Renée’s mouth quirk into a smile against her neck. “He always reminded me of my father.”

Isabel snorted. “Hilbert was not the fatherly sort.”

“Yeah, but my father had the same sort of, oh, I don’t know how to put it. Distracted professorial air about him, I guess. Half the family meals when I was young, he was off in his own mind, thinking about something he’d read or coming up with new ideas. He hadn’t done original research for decades, even. It was just the way he was built.”

“I suppose that does remind me of Hilbert.” Isabel shut her eyes and curled into a ball, and Renée curled her body around Isabel’s, still holding her close. “I just wish I knew,” Isabel whispered. “I wish I could find some sign of it in here, that we actually were friends, that there was something beneath it all, that he wasn’t just a _monster_.” Her voice broke on the last word and her chest felt tight and hot. Isabel pounded her fist against her chest, trying to relieve some of the tension, trying not to succumb to tears again. “I wish I knew.”

Renée didn’t answer. She simply held Isabel as the tears came pouring out again, giving Isabel an anchor, a safe harbor in the storm of her emotions.

And when Isabel’s tears finally stopped, Renée stopped holding her only long enough to pull her down the corridor to the sleeping nook Renée had claimed for herself. She pulled Isabel in with her, hugged Isabel close to her chest, tucked Isabel’s head against her shoulder and whispered calm little nothings against her ear.

And for the first time since she’d returned to the Hephaestus, Isabel Lovelace slept without dreaming.


End file.
